Avon Lake or Pickerington? Pros and Cons (Columbus, Cleveland: apartment complexes, condos)

[wrestler]

My family and I will be relocating to either the Avon Lake/Bay Village/Westlake area of Cleveland or the Pickerington/Gahanna area of Columbus. I would appreciate any positive or negatives about these 2 areas. Thanks for your time.

[NEmommy]

Welcome!
I would only say that the first group (Avon Lake, Bay Village and Westlake) is where I am at, and love it! Can't say much about Columbus, but you said in previous post you have friends there. How important is it to be close to them is up to you, but more important is where will you work? Do you plan to buy a house? If you have kids, maybe consider researching schools before making a decision...
Again, in my opinion, it's important to stay close to work, you do not want to drive from Columbus to CLE everyday to work, especially in winter time!!!
Best of luck to you!

[Clevelander17]

Avon Lake, Westlake, and Bay Village are all very nice suburbs of Cleveland. Each also has its own very good school system. Not sure where you're working, but you should have no problem getting around the Cleveland area, or to downtown, from those areas. You can just hop on to I-90 and head right downtown, or easily access some of the other freeways to get to where you need to go.

[katelynn1]

Avon Lake is close to the shopping areas in Avon and Westlake, but far enough to avoid all the traffic. It's also close to both the lake and highway 90. Its very family friendly!

[LMS7689]

Anything in particular you'd like to know about Pickerington? It's a nice area with good schools on the east side of Columbus. If you tell me a little more about what you're looking for in an area, I can probably answer you a little better.

In general, there's great shopping within a 20 minute radius (plenty of strip malls and grocery stores closer in, Easton Mall a little farther out). It's a great place to raise a family, there's not much crime - mostly speeding tickets and things like that. While its a large residential area, its pretty quiet overall. Lots of single family homes, a few apartment complexes and condos. There are some nice homegrown restaurants in the area, and its about 15-20 minutes to downtown Columbus. Pickerington is an "outside suburb" meaning it gets pretty rural past Pickerington as you move further away from Columbus.

Gahanna is very close to Easton, has a little more urban feel (but still very suburban by big city standards), and has lots of nice neighborhoods, but I'm not as familiar with Gahanna since I've never lived there.

Are you working in Cleveland? Its a long way away from Columbus to drive regularly, especially daily...